Survivor Response by Patrick Harris

Survivor Response by Patrick Harris

Author:Patrick Harris [Harris, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-04-24T18:30:00+00:00


Chapter 13

Alan watched the monitor feeds, entranced as two of his drones slaughtered the ZMT crew in front of a clothing store, stole the crew’s weapons, and ran in pursuit of the beat-up SUV. He smiled. They really fucking worked. His creations worked in the streets, networked to a subnet of Greenport’s wireless infrastructure. Instinctively, they moved, kicked, dodged, obeyed exactly as he designed them. Although he’d have to send out a small update to the drones’ routines to protect their faceplates and helmets from direct gunfire.

For now, he watched his own action movie, the remote zombies fleeing Belleville. The video feed shook and bounced with each passing building. Occasionally, a head would jerk to headlights and zigzagging cars.

Alan requested Sophie track the escaping SUV and approximate a destination. Judging by the turns to an eastward direction, Sophie guessed it would most likely be headed to Foxer. She switched to the city’s closed circuit televisions to follow the vehicle. A duo of monitors displayed the car’s movement. One at the oncoming end of the street received the glare of the headlights, and the other high on an opposite street corner to catch which way the car turned, if at all. The car would be limited by Greenport’s roadways and traffic.

His drones, however, didn’t need to adhere to where the streets could go. They scaled buildings and jumped rooftops and cut through alleyways and hustled across dilapidated lots. Not quite as the crow flies, but a more direct route to the bridge than Julian’s abductors could drive.

Alan’s phone buzzed, breaking his concentration from the first-person thrill ride playing out on the screens. He dug the phone out from his pocket—the screen read “Actress.” He was surprised it took her this long to call. Her socialite tendencies made her well connected to people all across Greenport, particularly the city’s arts district, where she frequented.

He pressed the green accept button.

“Alan: What. The. Hell. Is. Going. On.”

Alan pictured her stone faced and leaning forward with her hand rising and falling to the beat of her words for dramatic effect. “We’re still working on the details, but it appears a supply truck crashed, despite knowing that trucks are not allowed through Belleville.”

“More than that,” Caroline said. “Four men dressed in black fatigues rampaged down the street. Two are dead, but the two that didn’t get killed, murdered a ZMT crew point blank. I mean, one of them lived—a girl. But point blank just fucking killed them.”

No doubt Caroline’s hands were waving about. Alan watched the surviving ZMT wheeled away on the monitor, strapped to a stretcher with a brace on her neck and a splint on a grotesquely broken leg.

“I’ve ordered a police crew to find them,” he lied.

In fact, Sophie had been intercepting calls to Greenport’s call center and routing them to an automated artificial intelligence bot. The only call that went through came in via the city’s administrative portal by Karen. After that request for emergency services, he directed Sophie to reroute any voice calls and block any transmissions for additional service.



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